A Mexican citizen convicted in a contract killing laughed as he was put to death, hours after the governor rejected pleas by Mexican officials to stop the execution. "Today is a good day to die," Mario Benjamin Murphy, 25, said as a lethal injection began flowing into his body. He then began laughing and said: "I forgive all of you. I hope God does too." Murphy was part of a hit squad hired to kill James Radcliff, a Virginia Beach man beaten to death in July 1991.

The state's method of execution is unconstitutional because two of the three drugs it uses for lethal injection can cause "an agonizing and painful death," a judge ruled. Executioners must stop using the three-drug combination and use a single anesthetic drug because state law requires a painless death, the judge ruled in Elyria. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lethal injection procedure in Kentucky, which uses the same three drugs as Ohio.

Re "Change in Lethal Injections Ordered," Feb. 15 It has come to my attention that we are ignoring yet another minority: our nation's murderers. And we have decided that they deserve death without as much as a pinprick of pain, unlike the brutal and incredibly painful demise of their victims. Does that make sense? It's no wonder death penalty opponents say the death penalty doesn't deter murder. It's so watered down that even some proponents don't expect it to work! What happened to the good old days of public executions, where you suffered for your actions, and the public and potential murderers not only saw but felt and experienced what happens when you murder?

State corrections officials Tuesday proposed new lethal injection procedures, a first step toward resuming executions in California after a four-year halt. The proposals involve only minor changes to the three-drug method used on 11 of the 13 men put to death in the state since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. But the revisions appear to address the concerns of a federal judge who deemed the previous lethal injection practices unconstitutional for their risk of inflicting cruel and unusual punishment.

Death Row inmates would be able to choose death by injection rather than the gas chamber under a bill given final Assembly approval Tuesday and sent to the governor. Under the measure, by Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), California would join 22 other states that either require that capital punishment be carried out by intravenous injection or give prisoners a choice between injection and some other form of execution.

With Florida's electric chair under legal attack, state lawmakers convened in special session Wednesday to consider legislation giving condemned inmates the option of lethal injection. Executions in Florida came to a halt when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed in November to review whether the state's electric chair amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. Switching to injections would allow Republican Gov. Jeb Bush to resume signing death warrants.

The Senate on Thursday approved and sent to the Assembly a bill by state Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco) that would offer Death Row convicts the choice of being executed by fatal injection or lethal gas. Assembly Speaker Willie Brown has predicted that the legislation will win approval in the Assembly, where Democrats are no longer expected to kill bills relating to the death penalty.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, trying to reduce court challenges of death penalties, voted Tuesday to give condemned prisoners a choice between lethal injection and the gas chamber. By 6-0 votes, the panel approved two bills designed to head off claims like the one raised before the execution of Robert Alton Harris in April--that killing inmates in the state's gas chamber is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.

Convicted killer Carlos DeLuna, who maintained he was wrongly condemned for the slaying of a gas station attendant during a $150 robbery, was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Tex. DeLuna, 27, maintained that he did not kill Wanda Jean Lopez of Corpus Christi on Feb. 4, 1983. DeLuna visited with relatives Wednesday after the Supreme Court rejected his request for a stay of execution.